Your consulting reports are too long

There. We said it.
 
Your client has invested money, and faith, in your services. You’ve invested time, and effort, in finding insights for them. It’s a marriage made in heaven… until you give them that out-brief from hell. 
 
In this article—purposely short, to put you in the proper mindframe—we’re going to explore the roots of this unfortunately persistent problem. We’ll pay sad homage to its deleterious effects. And then—best part—we’ll tell you how to avoid this pitfall, profitably. 
 
Why does it happen?
 
You’d think that if a consultant uncovers Findings A, B, and C in the course of his/her work, then he/she would present those findings accordingly. 
 
But that’s hardly ever the case. There’s so much baggage, so many barnacles, weighing down the end product, that it defeats its very purpose of communicating information. It muddies the message. It’s a self-inflicted shot in the foot. 
 
There are a few reasons this happens. Some are more obvious than others. Some are deeply rooted, even insidious. 
 
Let’s start with the obvious. It’s safe to say that, as a consultant, you did one heck of a lot of work to come to Conclusion A. You did research. SME interviews. You studied benchmarks. Trends. Past consulting reports. You analyzed data. You tapped your years of experience. All to get “Conclusion A.” So it feels like you’re cheating the reader of all that led to it, and selling yourself short in the process, if you don’t detail every single element that went into this stunning finding. 
 
Here’s another reason this happens. Some people—it doesn’t matter if they’re consultants, stand-up comics, or CEOs—are simply insecure. It takes a lot of courage to live by “Less is more.” Because, devoid all the trappings, all that’s left is you. And that can be scary. 
 
Some people can handle this better than others. Not everyone’s skin is of equal thickness. So the resulting compensations manifest themselves in different ways, which are often wholly invisible to those displaying them. It could be flamboyant dressing. It could be an air of conceit: the classic insecurity cover-up. More mundanely, it can present itself as verbal diarrhea. Over-use of big words when small ones will do. And, of course, tautology: the repetition of the exact same thought in an over-wrought phrase such as “We all contributed together, everyone, as a team.” Uggh. 
 
We see this a lot in academia. We mention that because there’s a percentage of consultants who have their roots in that field. So they can be especially vulnerable. 
 
What does it do?
 
Assaulting your audience—whether in a written report, oral presentation, or over-packed PowerPoint slides—will have the exact opposite effect of what you intend. You want to inform them. At a deeper level, you want to impress them. And at the biz-dev level, you want to re-engage them, i.e., have them hire you for follow-on work. 
 
None of that will happen if their eyes are glazed over. That may sound painfully trite, but it happens all the time. The clients zone out. The consultants don’t realize. And the consultants are unpleasantly surprised when follow-on work—let alone positive feedback or praise—fails to materialize.
 
Think of it this way: Your client is so pressed for time that they hired you in the first place. There’s a decent chance that they possess the same skill sets that you have, or a good-enough subset thereof, to do the same interviews, research, and analysis that they’ve brought you on to conduct. 
 
But they’re jammed. They’re going flat out. They have big fish to fry, thunderbolts to heave. Why then, would you ever, ever waste one moment of their preciously limited time, especially when they’re paying you? 
 
How to overcome it
 
Here’s something you might not have realized. Fixing this problem is not easy. In fact, it can be very hard. 
 
If you want to prove your worth by showing everything you’ve done, you don’t want to make it look like you’re simply coasting on your client’s dime. At a deeper/psychological level, you don’t want to look less than competent or brilliant. 
 
So carving away at your presentation will feel like you’re carving away at yourself. Little wonder this problem is so persistent. It’s hard enough to recognize in the first place, let alone remedy. 
 
But it can be done. Here’s how: 
 
The biggest trick here is to role-play the part of your audience. Think of who they are, what their day will be like when you’re slotted in to present, what they expect to get from you, and at what pace. That will get you carving and prioritizing right away. 
 
Then, think of what you’re about to present from a dramatic standpoint. You’re telling a story. You want to set up the challenge, create suspense, and build to an ovation-worthy ta-dah! finish. 
 
You’ll already have the input to do this. You know what the challenge was: That’s why you were hired. Simply remember to state it succinctly, and enticingly. If you’re really good, you should be able to couch it to make it sound nearly impossible. Think about it: Is Superman ever called upon to help jump-start a car with a dead battery? No. No one would buy that comic book (or watch that TV episode, or buy a ticket to that movie). 
 
Next, you know what the steps were that will lead to your Big Conclusion. In hindsight, you’ve surmounted every challenge. But don’t gloss over that part! Mention them as yet more seemingly-insurmountable hurdles along the way. (That, by the way, will nicely check the “Make me look impressive” box.) 
 
And finally, do the Big Reveal. Wham. e = mc2. Line up all your findings/conclusions, like Rockettes, and end it there. Done right, you’ll need to wait for the applause to end before you move to the Q&A. 
 
Parting thoughts
 
There’s one other way to do this: Get help. Like us. We know a lot about these challenges, and how to surmount them, because we’ve been doing exactly that, successfully, for our clients, for years. Contact us right now and we can help you to quickly and cost-effectively make your deliverables really deliver. 
 

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